Characters
The Doctor
The game's silent protagonist.
- Badass Bookworm: The protagonist is a Victorian-era doctor, which generally carries connotations of gentlemanly behavior and higher learning. He is nonetheless proficient in both stealth and combat.
- Heroic Mime: The only times you will get to hear him vocalize is whenever he grunts.
Countess Sylvia
Voiced by: Terri Brosius
"I can guarantee your safe arrival, a promise few here can make."
A mysterious and powerful woman who wants the doctor to be brought to her estate for unknown reasons.
- Affably Evil: While her morals are certainly questionable, her manners are not, and she's fairly polite to the Doctor even after escapes the fishery and has likely cut his way through many of her minions.
- High Collar of Doom: Not only is it large, it's even covered in several metal spikes just to give her an even more menacing appearance.
- Magic Mirror: How she first makes herself known to the player, appearing in a mirror to invite them to her estate.
- Mysterious Veil: She wears a black veil that completely covers her head.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: While little has been seen of her, she's definitely a sinister figure implied to have gained power through corruption and assassination, and is garbed in a red and black dress.
Grezzo
Voiced by: Stephan Weyte
A mysterious man who aids the Doctor in escaping the Countess's men, and invites him to visit his antiques shop, The Emerald Eye, in the Market District.
- Actor Allusion: One of his lines when the player sells him something references the final boss of DUSK, who was also voiced by Stephan Weyte."Oh, this, I like better."
- Barrier Warrior: Any attempt to harm him will be met with a glowing green barrier that will erupt to block the attack.
- Emerald Power: He's an enigmatic figure associated with the color green, even aside from his green magic he has a glowing green eye and cane and his store is named "The Emerald Eye."
- High-Class Glass: He wears a monocle, fitting his overall very wealthy appearance.
- Mysterious Backer: He frees the Doctor, sells him supplies, offers the room above his shop as a safehouse, and directs him to collect the emblems needed to reach the countess's mansion, though his true motives are unknown.
- Offscreen Teleportation: After he frees the Doctor at the start of the game, he walks out of sight and vanishes, with no indication as to how he managed to leave the area so quickly. Using console commands to keep following him reveals that he actually does teleport, complete with flashy green particle effects.
- Shout-Out: A few of his lines are references to other properties.
- Teleportation: Anything sold to him instantly vanishes in a flash of green magic, while money appears with the same effect.
Minor Characters
Mr. Croup
The late owner of the Croup fishery.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: He hanged himself in his office when the Huntsmen attacked the fishery, leaving behind a suicide note lamenting his failure to see the countess's betrayal coming.
- Posthumous Character: He's already long since died by the time the game begins, with most information about him coming from his suicide note.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Mr. Croup assisted in the countess's rise to power, but she eventually sent her underlings to assault his fishery and slaughter all of his workers when she no longer had any use for him.
Hobbs
A particularly inept Huntsman, mentioned in various notes written by his fellows.
- Cloudcuckoolander: He definitely doesn't seem to be all there. He apparently believes that machinery breaks down because of bugs that eat electricity, and that those bugs help the hounds steal cheese.
- The Ghost: He's not yet seen in game, but there are a few notes written by him and he's mentioned multiple times in notes written by other Huntsmen.
- Plucky Comic Relief: The notes written by his exasperated co-workers provide most of the game's comedy.
Enemies
Huntsmen
Voiced by: Gianni Matragrano
"Peek-a-boo!"
The most common enemy type in the game, they act as the Countess's muscle throughout the city and it's surroundings. Despite their individual weakness, they are somewhat intelligence pursuers, have numbers, and come in many variants, making them nonetheless dangerous.
- Ambiguously Human: The huntsmen are humanoid and mostly act like humans, but we only see them when they're covered head-to-toe in clothing, they have Vader Breath and Glowing Eyes of Doom, and the description of one of their rifles explicitly says that it cannot be used by ordinary people. They likely are (or were) mutated or otherwise altered humans, though just how much they differ from a normal human is unclear.
- Animation Bump: They previously had stiff and basic animations, until the "Tavern" update heavily reworked them, giving them a Slouch of Villainy ideal, jerky Ax-Crazy movements, and far more aggressive and visceral attacks.
- Ax-Crazy: The Huntsmen are clearly rather unhinged. They'll often shout about how much they'll love wearing your skin when in combat, and one can be found hacking frenziedly at a side of beef on a table, screaming "AXE GOES IN, BLOOD COMES OUT!" repeatedly.
- Bullying a Dragon: It really wasn't a good idea to make sadistic sport of their capture of a Goatman. The end result inside the Slaughtered Goat speaks for itself.
- Evil Sounds Raspy: Their voices are suitably gravelly and hoarse.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: The huntsmen all have glowing eyes, the color of which changes depending on their alertness. Green means they haven't noticed anything suspicious, yellow means they're investigating something, and red means they've found you and are actively trying to kill you.
- Heavily Armored Mook: Some of the huntsmen wear breastplates with a sort of high metal collar that covers much of their head, which make their head and torso resistant to gunfire and completely immune to damage from the canesword, as well as making them totally immune to Back Stabs since their spine is properly protected.
- Malevolent Masked Men: The huntsmen all have their faces covered, and will kill you on sight.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Subverted. At first glance they seem remarkably casual with each other about their positions as Evil Minions, but the game further paints them as being immensely petty, psychotic, and completely lacking in empathy, laughing at the misery of their fellows and engaging in Cold-Blooded Torture for fun.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: Many of the huntsmen have this color scheme.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The huntsmen's eyes serve as indications of their alertness. Red means that they've found you and are actively trying to kill you.
- Slouch of Villainy: They have horrible back posture.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: The rifles used by the huntsmen are described as being impossible for an ordinary human to wield, though you can take the ammunition from them for your revolver. You can also pick up and throw their axes, though this only does minimal damage.
- Weapon-Based Characterization: The huntsmen can usually be seen wielding either an axe, rifle or sometimes a torch, fitting their role as hunters. The weapon choice of using an axe is one of the many points toward the unhinged, Ax-Crazy nature of the huntsmen.
Hounds
Trained hunting dogs employed by the Huntsmen in tracking the Doctor.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Hounds are bizarre fish-wolf hybrids with prehensile noses. They do still bark, exhibit pack behavior, and have similar body language to real canines, and a note in the Mines refers to them as "canines" offhandedly.
- Follow Your Nose: The Hounds can sniff out nearby food and corpses to eat, which can be useful for luring them away or distracting them from tracking down the player's scent.
- Fragile Speedster: They are very mobile, but go down only in a couple of hits. But good luck hitting them before they bite you in the first place.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Hounds have glowing blue eyes, which just so happen to look just like the glowing blue crystals lining the walls of the sea caves they are first encountered in from a distance.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The Hounds are an odd combination of dog and fish, with a mostly doglike body that has fins, gills, and blue scales, as well as prehensile nostrils similar to those of a moray eel.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: The hounds aren't picky with what kind of meat is available to them, and will happily feed on the corpse of one of their own. Justified, as a note states that the hounds in the kennel haven't been fed recently and are likely ravenous.
The Goatman
The hulking, goatlike monstrosity that the huntsmen have barricaded inside the Slaughtered Goat tavern.
- Boss-Only Level: The Goatman is the sole occupant of the Slaughtered Goat, having killed everyone else.
- Expy: It bears a striking resemblance to Bloodborne's, Beast-possessed Soul miniboss.
- Fed to the Beast: Once you're in the tavern, you can't leave so easily; the Huntsmen locked the door behind you with the explicit hope that you'll get yourself killed by the beast.
- Gruesome Goat: The Goatman is a towering, bipedal, goatlike monster with piercing yellow eyes and a back filled with broken blades.
- Implacable Man: One of the things that makes the Goatman so dangerous is the fact that it will relentlessly chase the player if you get trapped inside. Closing the door on them? They'll smash it. Go to another floor? It will slowly home in on you and find you eventually. Try to run? It will make a mad dash forward and quickly begin to outrun you. Unless, of course, you trap it in the attic. And if you think guns will bring it down, think again, it can survive upwards of ten shotgun blasts point-blank.
- Irony: It's pretty damn ironic to know that all of the huntsmen that were trapped in the tavern, named the Slaughtered Goat, got slaughtered by a goat-monster.
- The Krampus: During the Christmas Holiday Mode the Goatman's model is changed to look like the Krampus.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Goatman is strong enough to kill the player and break apart doors in a single hit, durable enough to survive 10 shotgun blasts straight to the face, and fast enough that it's charge is able to overtake a sprinting player. There's a very good reason the game encourages sneaking past it.
- Lodged-Blade Recycling: If the player is out of reach, the beast will tear out the weapons stuck in its back and throw them at the player as a ranged attack.
- Made of Iron: The beast is incredibly durable, able to take dozens of pistol bullets and multiple shotgun blasts before it goes down. It's worth noting that it's probably not at full strength, either — this thing just tore through over a dozen huntsmen and has a back filled with broken blades, so the one in the Slaughtered Goat is likely a weakened specimen.
- Organ Drops: Killing the beast lets you claim its horns, each of which will sell for a very good price.
Bat-Barbers
Razor-wielding, humanoid bat-monsters who infest the Market District.
- Bat People: They resemble hunched-over, clawed humanoids with the fur and head of a vampire bat.
- In a Single Bound: They're primarily melee opponents, but even if you're several stories above them they'll just jump up to you to close the distance.
- It Can Think: Despite their animalistic behavior, they seem to have retained some human intelligence. Aside from their ability to wield straight-razors as weapons, you can also find one who seems to have collected a pile of treasure to serve as bait for an ambush.
- Super Window Jump: If there's a window in between you and them, they'll just leap right through it. Even if that window is several stories off the ground.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: If the player moves out of melee range, they'll throw their razor before pulling out another.
